


definitely no refund, thank you

by Hymn



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, M/M, Multi, beginning of a relationship, lemme know if there's anything else to tag for pls, post kh2, riku is angst guys, slightly aged up characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-15
Updated: 2007-04-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 23:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13985328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: It was rather inevitable, really; the world wasn’t fair, but some things were just meant to be. Sora, Riku, and Kairi are one of them.





	definitely no refund, thank you

**Author's Note:**

> springkink prompt

Riku has dreams about a silver and shadow encrusted beach; about sitting where the water meets the land, and the sky is a dark blanket over everything and nothing at all, and thinking: _so this is what it comes down to? Huh, I kind of want my money back._

He wakes up to Sora, who never used to be a light sleeper, but is now. “Hey,” he says, “hey, hey. You awake? What were you dreaming about?”

Riku squints into the darkness irritably. They’re at his house, this week, and he’s grown used to the gentle starlight that floods Sora’s room. He shrugs, and shoves his sheets off, turning to Sora. In a moment his eyes adjust, however, and he’s looking directly into Sora’s smiling face. 

“What are you grinning at?”

Sora shrugs at him, unabashed, eyes shining. “Nothing. Just. It’s nice to see your eyes, you know? They’re really bright, even when it’s dark.”

“Okay, wow,” Riku mutters through his blush, “It’s too late for you to be ridiculous. Really, stop that.”

Laughing, Sora shoves him down to go back to sleep; somewhere in there Sora’s fingers get entangled with his, and the last sleepy murmur Sora makes is so close that it stirs Riku’s bangs, and Riku holds still with it, lest he shatter the moment. “We should get up early and kidnap Kairi for breakfast.”

When Sora’s fast asleep and snoring, Riku breathes out, moves a touch closer, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, let’s.”

When he dreams, next, Sora turns to him, beaming like a small sun in the silent darkness of the beach, and says, “We did it,” and okay, yeah, maybe Riku doesn’t really want a refund, after all.

*

The next morning they’re all eating pineapple and paopu shaped pastries for breakfast, close enough that they’re knocking their knees together on the rickety stairs that lead up to their old tree house. 

“You sleep well?” Kairi asks, because it’s a routine that they feel they need, even if they don’t necessarily want it. Riku sucks juice off of his thumb, and thinks maybe he’ll catch some fish for lunch. 

Sora responds, “Well enough! Riku only woke me up three times.”

“Sora’s down to one, now,” Riku commented, “and I don’t think it was a nightmare.”

Kairi laughed, and Sora blushed, and Riku smirked over another chunk of sweet-sharp pineapple. “I feel a little guilty,” Kairi says in the next moment with a slight grimace. “I didn’t have any.”

“What?” Sora asks, entire face lighting up, hand moving wildly. Riku and Kairi eye the pastry in it warily. “That’s wonderful! Three nights in a row, Kairi! No wonder you look less like a zombie.”

Riku almost chokes on his pineapple, at that. “Gee,” Kairi says, deadpan. “Thanks.”

“Uh…”

“It makes sense,” Riku cuts in, watching Kairi. Her hair shines like a river of dark fire in the sun, and makes her tan even deeper. She looks exotic, and like she belongs on an island. Riku wonders if Radiant Garden has an island hidden, somewhere. 

Kairi frowns at him, and then looks away, fidgeting with her breakfast. “Does it?”

“Sure. You don’t have as much baggage as we do, that’s all. You should be thankful,” he adds with a bitter smile. “You’re not tainted.”

“No,” Sora snaps, glaring, and Kairi’s shaking her head. 

“I feel guilty,” she insists. “I should have been there with you guys, to share that baggage. It’s not fair.”

“Yeah, well,” Sora mutters, before Riku can figure out how to respond, or Kairi can continue. He throws the rest of his pastry with a fierce, sharp movement of his arm, up into a flock of seagulls, who snatch at it noisily. “There’s a lot about life that’s not fair, you know? But the important thing is that we got through it, and we’re not evil, and we’re still young, and we’ve got each other, right? You’ve got a lot years left to get as ‘tainted’ as we are, Kairi.”

“Huh,” Riku says into the silence that follows Sora’s abrupt outburst. Then Kairi’s clapping her hands, a smile on her face that’s a little rueful, but mostly okay. 

“Bravo, bravo!”

And, yeah, that’s better. Sora’s face looks weird when it’s not in a grin, or an expression of perplexity. Sora’s scrubbing at the back of his head sheepishly, eyes laughing. “So?” he asks. “What should we do today?”

Riku smiles faintly up into the sunlight, because they’re not exactly healed, but it’s getting easier to simple _be_ who they are now, which is so drastically different from who they used to be.

“Let’s go fishing at the cove. I’ll catch the fish today,” he suggests, and Kairi instantly begins drooling over the prospect of sushi.

And that’s that. 

*

Riku’s calf deep in the water, glaring down into the shifting, sunlit waves like he could scare the fish into his hands. Sora’s off searching for firewood, having already caught his share of fish. But they’d stopped using rods and hooks a while ago, after Sora brought back a new technique he’d learned in the Land of the Dragon’s. 

“The light makes an illusion with the waves,” he’d said, patiently, and then snapped his arm down, his hand out, and come back up grinning with a fish squirming in his grasp. “You just have to see through it.”

“Then it’s a wonder you ever managed,” Riku’d said dryly, and then proceeded to bite his tongue as he tried, and failed miserably.

He’s still pretty much pants at it. 

There’s a steady splash-splash as Kairi wades up next to him, her shorts rolled up over her thighs tantalizingly. “Shh,” Riku murmurs sarcastically. “I’m hunting.”

Kairi snorts, and nudges him in the side with her elbow. She has a rather hard elbow, Riku thinks with a wince, and nudges her back.

“Hey you,” she says solemnly after a moment. “Listen to me, okay?”

Riku gives her a wary look, but shrugs. Then Kairi catches him up in her gray-violet eyes, and he’s helpless to do otherwise. “I know you, Riku. I know what you’ve done – what you did to _me_ – and what you did _for_ us. I know your faults, Riku, and I know your strengths. We grew up together, and we fought together, and we almost died together a couple of times. There’s no way I couldn’t know you.”

Riku doesn’t even twitch when a fish slides like a feather light kiss along his ankle; he’s barely even breathing.

“I know you,” Kairi says, clearly, “and I am proud to know you.” They’re silent for a moment, seagulls screaming somewhere, and salt water dripping from them. The sun is hot against their bared skin, especially on Riku’s neck from where he’s reluctantly pulled his hair back.

“I just wanted you to know,” she finishes, just a touch awkward, and blushing, which causes Riku to blush, and start, and open his mouth to say something no doubt asinine. Luckily, Sora comes back right that moment, and saves him.

“RIKU,” he calls, “HAVE YOU CAUGHT ANYTHING YET? I’M HUNGRY.” 

Kairi grins, and hollers back, “NOPE. HE STILL CAN’T CATCH A THING.”

“AW, MAN. RIKU, THAT’S PRETTY LAME.”

Riku twitches, pride stung, and tells Kairi in a doom filled hiss, “I am so going to get you guys.” Kairi laughs as she splashes back up to the shore.

*

They stay there until evening, when the sun goes down in a glorious display, and the sea no longer looks green and blue, but like a single shining expanse of fire-white glass. Their fire is high, and their bellies are full, and they’re laid out on the warm sands watching the stars.

“I don’t want to go home,” says Kairi. “It’s not fair that I can’t sleep over with you guys anymore. I hate going to bed alone.”

“Poor Kairi,” Sora laughs. “But at least you’re not having nightmares, anymore.”

With a huff, Kairi says, “But what if I want to be there for _your_ nightmares? And besides, that’s not…exactly…what I meant.”

Riku stops breathing and very carefully begins counting stars in the sky. “…Oh,” Sora says, a gentle, quiet, lovely shock imbuing his voice. “Oh.” After a moment, he adds, in a gentle, warm voice like and unlike him, “I wish you could be with us. Riku’s eyes shine in the dark, like stars.”

“Argh,” says Riku. 

It makes Kairi giggle, quietly, and then she says, in a voice half bluster, but mostly determination, “I want to see it. Let’s do it. Screw our parents, we deserve a vacation.”

“Kairi!” Sora sits upright, looking over at her; Riku gets up slower, pulling his sight from the sky to them. The fire lights up the panels and angles in Sora’s face brilliantly, catches the bright highlights in his dark hair, the strength of his bare shoulders and the electric brightness of his eyes. 

“You sure?” Riku asks, because he’d be a fool to say no, when it’s practically all he’s been thinking about since the time he realized he had hormones and a dick. 

Kairi rises, brushes off her clothing resolutely, and smiles at them brilliantly. “Yes. Let’s go, together. We deserve this.”

“Okay.” Sora smiles sweetly, standing and offering his hand to Riku, pulling him so that they’re all close, nerves jumping and excited. It’s so sudden, but so right; it’s like everything’s been leading up to this moment, since the beginning. 

*

There’s a small hot spring up a little ways from the cove that they go to. It’s private and pretty, all clean, crystal clear water and steaming air, and a sky that sparkles and shines through the irregular opening that the thick foliage makes above them. 

When they get there, they pause, a little timid, and feeling ridiculous for it. Sora purses his lips, and looks them both in the eyes, before laughing, low and a little wicked; his movements are fluid when he shucks off his swim trunks, and Riku’s seen him naked before a hundred times, but this, this is different.

“Oh,” Kairi sighs, softly. “You’re beautiful.”

Sora grins, waggling his eyebrows and flexing in tease. “Why, thank you!”

With a roll of his eyes, Riku walks forward, and pushes the shorter boy into the hot water. Sora yelps, splashes, and erupts out of the hot spring, steaming and dripping, and laughing through a glare. That stops, though, when he pushes his wet hair out of his face and gets an eyeful of an equally naked Riku.

Riku smirks, and steps gingerly in, aware all the while of Sora’s admiring stare. He turns, and offers a hand back to Kairi. _The moment of truth_ , he thinks; _does she really mean what she said_? Sora almost doesn’t count; he’s a mangled, glorious mess of light and dark. He’s good, and real, and tainted, where Kairi is _pure_. He raises one eyebrow, to hide his nervousness, and says, “Well?”

There’s a pause, like the world holding its breath, and then Kairi smiles, and slides out of her clothes to join them.


End file.
